A letter from _why • Hacker News Board

Re: A letter from _why

#91

Post by jarin » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

ISeemToBeAVerb wrote: post #25

As a beginner at programming, I find _Why to be a breath of fresh air. I realize that experienced coders may berate him for advocating writing sloppy code, but for someone (like me) who is just getting into this deep rabbit hole, I find his thoughts to be encouraging. I fully agree with some of the comments here that mention writing bad code is the only path to writing clean and safe code. I wish more experienced hac…

A day that I wrote bad code? I write bad code EVERY day!

Then I fix it and it's great.

Re: A letter from _why

#92

Post by mindcrime » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 4:44 PM UTC

rbanffy wrote: post #42

wtracy wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you program and want any longevity to your work, make a game. all else recycles, but people rewrite architectures to keep games alive." ... or any sufficiently large and financially important enterprise code, really. :-(

This is like saying zombies are alive... No. Enterprise (and enterprisey) code is born dead. With huge amount of effort, it may be coerced into walking. It also eats brains.

Enterprise (and enterprisey) code is born dead

This strikes me as all of:

1. wrong

2. unsupported

3. inflammatory

4. of no value to the conversation.

Would you care to support / substantiate that claim somehow?

Re: A letter from _why

#93

Post by jarin » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 4:45 PM UTC

mtogo wrote: post #90

wisty wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why (with an underscore) was a cool pseudonymous Ruby programmer / writer, who completely disappeared. He's like the Bobby Fisher of programming, without the crazy. (OK, he sounds a little ... artistic, but that's not really crazy). Some people say he stopped writing because he was in danger of being "outed" by people trying to find his identity. Or maybe he got sick of Ruby, and wanted to do something else (without…

> He's like the Bobby Fisher of programming W H A T !? How is _why in any way the Bobby Fisher of programming? Bobby Fischer was a famous, amazing chess player. _why is a person that writes code and some people (some Ruby developers, rather) look up to. They're not comparable in any way.

Bobby Fischer was famous, among chess players. _why was famous, among rubyists.

The only difference is they didn't make a movie about _why.

Re: A letter from _why

#94

Post by ascendant » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 5:24 PM UTC

javadyan wrote: post #6

> They aren’t afraid to write dangerous or “crappy” code. If you worry too much about being clean and tidy, you can’t push the boundaries. Yes, of course. You push the boundaries, move on, and at the end of the day, we have to maintain the stinking pile of "experiments" you left us with. Ugh.

Not every programmer aspires to write enterprise-level software. Some people like to tinker and try new things. This is exactly what he is advocating. Leave it to the sterile corporate developers to immediately assume all programming is on 500 KLOC Spring/Hibernate applications.

Re: A letter from _why

#95

Post by ascendant » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 5:25 PM UTC

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #2

Please add [2005] to the title. You had my hopes up there for a moment.

Yeah, I saw the title and that page couldn't load fast enough. His legend grows with each passing year.

Re: A letter from _why

#96

Post by jmlane » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 7:09 PM UTC

patrickg wrote: post #47

pygy_ wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's a top notch high and low-level programmer with excellent taste for API design (and a language geek). He's also a talented poet/writer, painter/cartoonist/web designer and composer/singer/musician. From ~2002 to 2009, he released a tremendous amount of material (dozens of code projects, thousands of blog posts), then disappeared abruptly, deleting almost everything he had ever published. His blog posts were humor…

I once bought a printed Shoes manual from Lulu.com and it is the absolute best manual (from a 'I love to read this book' point of view). Extremely impressive. Guess it is already worth a few bucks today ;-)

I may eventually investigate a way to get it printed and bound in a classy hardcover with a dust jacket, similar to the photo of the book from _Why's guide site. This is one of few programming/tech books that I feel deserve such treatment.

Re: A letter from _why

#97

Post by erikpukinskis » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 7:31 PM UTC

hrabago wrote: post #59

First, you have to learn the rules. Then you have to master the rules. You have to really know what they're for, how they make things better. Then, finally, you can start breaking the rules.

Disagree. Do all of those things in any order you fancy.

Re: A letter from _why

#98

Post by superbobry » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 7:57 PM UTC

mibbit wrote: post #69

bh42222 wrote: post #66

_why is not an average programmer. His advise is good for masters of programming. He is also a super nice guy and sounds like he thinks anyone could become a super programmer. I don't think so. And I fear his advice will be taken most to hart by below average programmers.

One of the worst thing about this industry is the constant idolization of programmers, and languages by below average programmers.

Any industry for that matter; just replace programmer with (for example).

Re: A letter from _why

#99

Post by superbobry » Tue, Aug 23, 2011, 7:59 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #97

hrabago wrote: post #59

First, you have to learn the rules. Then you have to master the rules. You have to really know what they're for, how they make things better. Then, finally, you can start breaking the rules.

Disagree. Do all of those things in any order you fancy.

That would probably ruin all the fun of rule-breaking.

Re: A letter from _why

#100

Post by walrus » Wed, Aug 24, 2011, 1:35 AM UTC

mibbit wrote: post #69

bh42222 wrote: post #66

_why is not an average programmer. His advise is good for masters of programming. He is also a super nice guy and sounds like he thinks anyone could become a super programmer. I don't think so. And I fear his advice will be taken most to hart by below average programmers.

One of the worst thing about this industry is the constant idolization of programmers, and languages by below average programmers.

I learned to make computer games by making below average computer games. What's wrong with someone learning to make programming langauges by making below average programming langauges?